Sonic Heroes

It can't be said that Sonic Team isn't creative. Though they do stick to their franchises, new ideas are paramount for them. Both Sonic Adventure titles demonstrated this spirit of innovation excellently, and Sonic Heroes follows suit.

The developers of Sonic Heroes were very ambitious - perhaps too ambitious. SH contains a lot of new material, but somehow, much of it doesn't come off quite right. It took a few steps forward, but a few steps back as well, providing a mixed bag of results.

The basic concept behind most of Sonic's recent titles has been that of different characters following separate but intertwining stories around the same storyline. Team Sonic - Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles - receives a note from Dr. Eggman, telling them he's on track to take over the world. Team Dark - Shadow, Rouge, and E-123 Omega (a new character) - stumble across one another in a chance meeting; Shadow seeks answers about his past from the doctor, Rouge is after treasure, and Omega wants revenge against Eggman for deactivating him. Team Rose - Amy, Cream, and Big - are looking for Sonic, Chocola (Cheese the chao's brother), and Froggy, respectively. And team Chaotix - Espio, Charmy, and Vector, a freelance detective agency - are hired by a mysterious client to track down and dispatch Eggman. These four paths intersect in a number of places, and through a few twists, eventually come to a mutual conclusion. It's somewhat disappointing, though, that Team Sonic's story is by far the least interesting, while the other three at least offer some insight into the plot of the game.

SH's basic gimmick is that each team of three characters plays as one. Every character type has a signature use: the speed character in each team can move the fastest; the flying character can lift the team into the air; and the power character can break obstacles and dish out damage like nobody's business. In addition to each type also having other useful abilities (speed characters can perform homing jumps, power characters can float in midair, et cetera), there are also a number of unique character traits (Espio, for instance, can become invisible and/or throw shurikens). While one character leads, the other two follow along, and the leader can be switched on the fly with the press of a button to adapt to new circumstances. It's impossible to go through any of Sonic Heroes's 14 stages with a single character type, so switching to the right character at the right time is a necessary skill to learn (though sometimes, the game helps out with signs indicating which type is best for the upcoming area). Unfortunately, whereas control over choosing the lead character is relatively easy, controlling them afterward is a different matter - cornering is tough no matter what character's leading, turning around is next to impossible, and steep edges seek to foil your team at every chance.

Each team's story has its own difficulty curve - Sonic is of moderate difficulty, Dark is the hardest, Rose is the game at its easiest, and Chaotix has unique goals that make it a challenge all its own. Basic level navigation is supplemented not only by the three-character dynamic, but also by level-ups, bonus stages, and bosses. Power cores (blue for speed, yellow for flying, red for power) are earned from defeating certain enemies, finding an out-of-the-way capsule, or crossing a checkpoint, and increase their corresponding character's level. Higher-leveled characters are faster, stronger, and more powerful, sometimes even learning new moves, up to a maximum level of three (levels reset to 0 in new stages and after losing a life). Bonus stages are entered by keeping a magic key (found in the level) until the end, and entail racing along a tube (which unfortunately emphasizes the game's already awkward controls) and collecting spheres to either reach the end in time, or catch up to a chaos emerald. To reach the game's fifth, final story separation, you must collect the seven emeralds in addition to completing all four stories. There are eight boss stages as well; however, two of them are battles against other teams, two are all-out melees against swarms of robots, and two of the remaining four are basically the same easily-destroyed boss.

The gameplay graphics of Sonic Heroes aren't incredibly sophisticated, but have a lot of bells and whistles in detailed environments. CG cutscenes scattered throughout the game are wonderfully animated. The soundtrack is good, with a lot of addictive arcadey tunes and some good dramatic tracks. A lot of the old cartoony sound effects have returned again, and are complemented by voice acting (some awful, some really good).

The basic game could easily take upwards of ten hours to play through, and there are two missions for each stage on each team. All in all, there are 120 emblems to collect, and certain emblem milestones unlock multiplayer modes (there are seven of them altogether, including races, battles, and ring collecting competitions). However, as regards replay value, there's something missing that kept the previous Sonic Adventures afloat long after the story was over: chao raising is completely absent from SH.

Conceptually, Sonic Heroes is very impressive, and it was a highly ambitious project, but along the way a few things went wrong. The controls are awkward, some level design points are hard to work around, and the camera is more irritating than before. There's a lot of good in Sonic Heroes, but it's lying behind a mask of poor refinement and polish that could easily ruin the experience. If you can get used to it, though, Sonic Heroes is about as good as 3D Sonic gets (less chao replay and bosses).

Progress: Complete